Peoria Public Schools is introducing new coursework to classrooms this year: a district-wide sex education program.
28 principals, as well as assistant principals and special education coordinators, gathered at Woodruff Career and Technical Center to learn about the curriculum Tuesday.
Some parts of the lesson felt like a real sex ed class, complete with awkward laughter.
But the new program, called FLASH, has a serious goal. It aims to lower Peoria’s rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Local health department statistics say Peoria county ranks higher than state and national figures for both.
Woodruff's principal Tom Blumer has worked in the district for more than two decades. He says it has been a long time coming.
“I have girls in my school who are pregnant, and that’s awfully difficult to overcome if you’re starting off not even adulthood with a child to take care of," Blumer said. "You’re really going to struggle.”
District 150 schools previously taught with an abstinence-based model. The FLASH program teaches contraception and STD prevention. Special Education Director Maureen Langholf says the district will closely track student performance through testing provided by the program. But some of those outcomes, like improving the statistics, might not be tangible until a few more years down the road.
"We might not see a direct change in the statistics for fifteen years," Langholf said.
Langholf says the first measure of success is to get students to start making healthier choices.